This episode features Dr. Kimberly Guerin, Madison School District's new Superintendent. Dr. Guerin welcomes families, students and staff to the 2022-2023 school year and discusses her vision for the future as she joins the Madison family.
This episode features Dr. Kimberly Guerin, Madison School District's new Superintendent. Dr. Guerin welcomes families, students and staff to the 2022-2023 school year and discusses her vision for the future as she joins the Madison family.
Nicole Rodriguez: Welcome back to Parenting Future-Focused Kids. I'm excited to be joined by Madison's new superintendent, Dr. Kimberly Guerin. Dr. Guerin comes to Madison with a wealth of knowledge and most recently served the Scottsdale Unified School District as the assistant superintendent of educational services. Today, we will get to know Dr. Guerin and talk about the upcoming school year. So thank you so much for being here today, Dr. Guerin. We are so grateful that you joined the Madison family. Just tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to becoming Madison's superintendent.
Superintendent Guerin: Thank you so much. So I actually grew up in the valley. My family and I moved here from Ohio in 1978. So I started third grade in the Paradise Valley School District and grew up, graduated from Paradise Valley and became a teacher. So I was a kindergarten teacher and a second grade teacher and expected to spend my whole career in the classroom. But my principal asked me if I would take on a leadership role, and I became a teacher on assignment, and I fell in love with helping teachers in a different way. I became an assistant principal and a principal and for principal I was a principal for about six years at a very large title one school, 1300 students, and we were a high achieving school and it was an simply incredible opportunity to grow my leadership skills. After that, I became assistant superintendent of Educational Leadership, which gave me the opportunity to supervise three elementary schools and most recently, I was an assistant superintendent in the Scottsdale School District for educational services, which means I supervised all the departments such as gifted, special education, teaching and learning. When the Madison superintendent position opened up, I was so excited to apply and I'm very grateful to be selected. Everyone has been extremely welcoming and kind, which does not surprise me. Madison has that reputation. So even though it's only day five of my official time here, it already feels like home.
Nicole Rodriguez: Well, that's awesome to hear. We're so excited to have you and I know I've heard that you have some ties, previous ties in your family to the Madison School District. So you've really been rooted in our community for a while.
Superintendent Guerin: That's true. So my husband is a Madison alum, and when we drive by Madison No.1 , he claims to have hit many homeruns in Little League at that field. So he has some really fond memories. And his brothers and sister also went to Madison. And then I also found out that my father in law, who, by the way, is 80 his brothers, his younger brothers works in the Madison school district. So so that's quite a long time ago. And interestingly, enough, when I was in high school, I had an opportunity to participate in the Western Savings Scholarship Program. And that program was you could come up with a community service project and apply. And if awarded, Western Savings would fund the project and you could earn scholarship money. So I had a friend that was a teacher in Madison, and she said her middle school needed before and after school programing. So four of my high school friends and I developed before and after school programing in Madison. We would get out of high school as seniors early and drive down. We had a computer club, dance club basketball and worked hand-in-hand with the district to develop those programs. And I was we were awarded scholarships from that. And that is really when I fell in love with teaching and decided that teaching was my calling. So Madison has always had a special place in my heart for that very reason. And to think that I could come back to the place that helped me decide on education as a career and lead as superintendent. It's it feels like full circle for me.
Nicole Rodriguez: Yeah. I was just going to say that's a real full circle moment. And, you know, you talked about being in the classroom to being a principal, you know, to being in an administrative role. So, you know, you're coming to us with just a wealth of knowledge and that previous experience with Madison. And we're really excited.
Superintendent Guerin: Thank you.
Nicole Rodriguez: What do you believe is the most important aspect of being superintendent?
Superintendent Guerin: So I believe it is empowering others to do everything they can for students so we all remember that special staff member, that special teacher that makes a child feel known and cared for. And so I feel like it is my job to value our employees, to move roadblocks out of the way, to make sure that they have the resources they need to focus on students each day to meet the needs of each individual student. If I have done that at the end of the day, then then I have accomplished what I hope to accomplish. And I would like every child to feel like I want my son to feel when he goes to school. I'll never forget that first day of kindergarten when I had to drop off and go and get the Kleenex out and thought about all the teachers that would be spending even more time with my son than they spent with me and how I wanted him to be cared for. And that's how I want every student to be cared for. And not only every student, but every community member and every employee.
Nicole Rodriguez: With that in mind. What are a few areas that you like to focus on as superintendent?
Superintendent Guerin: Well, as my first year, we live in interesting times, of course. And so my hope is that we can all take a deep breath and remember the excitement of back to school, first day of school. Of course, we're still living with COVID, but in a different way. So I hope that we can all celebrate together some of those activities that we get to do that we haven't been able to do for a while like our staff welcome back celebration. Some of the social activities that we're going to be able to do in classrooms as our mitigation strategies are still with us, but change. And I hope that we all can remember why we love school and if we're an employee, why we chose this profession and really focus on the joy of school, focus on, of course, academics, making sure students have what they need moving forward while also making sure if there's any gaps that we're filling those gaps and of course, focusing on the whole child. That is one of the things I love about Madison. Right when you open the Web page, you see that we are focused on a whole the whole child. So not just academics, but social emotional support as well, that every student comes to school happy, wanting to be here and excited to learn and have everything they need.
Nicole Rodriguez: Absolutely. And I think Joy is such an important part, you know, coming back together, being together, being stronger together. I think those are all great things to focus on, especially coming out of these challenging times, as you mentioned over the past couple of years. In our you know, in our last episode, former Madison superintendent, Dr. Baca talked about the importance of social and emotional learning, which you mentioned earlier. So why do you believe that social and emotional learning is integral to student success, especially now?
Superintendent Guerin: If a student doesn't feel safe, if a student doesn't feel cared for, if a student doesn't have the essentials that they need, it's going to be almost impossible to focus on academics and move them forward academically. We know as adults when we enter a social situation or we enter the workplace, we want people to be excited that we're there. We want people to notice if we're not and we need to feel needed. So we would like every student when we focus on social, emotional learning, that every student feels safe and secure cared for and frankly essential to the classroom. My, my, my colleagues, my students, the teacher, we want employees to feel this way as well, that people would miss me if I wasn't here. And they need me to move forward as a class, as a school employee. All of those things. So it is an essential component to being able to be successful with teaching and learning. We can't isolate one without the other. I think they're absolutely interconnected. And that's why Dr. Baca was so wise when he focused on that.
Nicole Rodriguez: Right, absolutely. And it ties into that whole child model that we focus on here in Madison and that they go hand in hand. And that's really what allows our students to feel cared for, to feel safe in the classroom and to feel like they can succeed. And that's such an important part, as you said, for staff as well. And I know that we integrate this with our employees as well as our students. So it's this full model. And I know for me, that's that's especially important, especially as an employee of the Madison School District.
Superintendent Guerin: Well, when you compare with other districts, our retention rate, the time people stay, the amount of applicants we get even during a teacher shortage, shows that people want to be in Madison. They want to stay, and they feel good about working here and they feel valued and that is something that we really need to continue because we want to put the best teacher and the best staff member around children and in front of children in the classroom. Every day.
Nicole Rodriguez: Right. Right. And, you know, as you mentioned before, this is this has been a challenging time for staff, for students, for our families, for our communities. And, you know, we're coming into this new year and we want to focus on joy and togetherness. So what is your message as we move forward into the new school year? As the new school year begins and, you know, we just get going for the 22-23 school year?
Superintendent Guerin: My message would be for everyone to take a deep breath and yes, we all need a deep breath and focus on what we love about the school. If we're if you're a teacher, why did you choose this profession? If you work in the front office, why do you love to work in a school? If you're a bus driver, when you open that door and the student steps on the bus, is that your moment of joy in the morning? If you are a student, what do you love about learning? When that light bulb goes off, when you're cooperatively learning with other students in your class or solving problems or working on a special project, what is your favorite elective or special area? So if we we know as adults we live in a divisive time right now. So if we could quiet that noise and remember our why, remember why we love this district, remember why we love this community and focus on something that we all share. We can put the division aside and remember that we're all about kids. We're all about our students. That is a shared concern of all of us. And if we focus on that, we can move forward together in a way that will bring us joy every day.
Nicole Rodriguez: I love taking that deep breath and putting, you know, our students at as we always do at the forefront of all of our decisions and actions. And I think that would just make for a wonderful school year. But, you know, as a former teacher, you know that the start of the school year can sometimes be challenging. You know, students schedules are changing from the summer. Maybe you're dropping your preschool or your kindergartner off for the first time. And that's, you know, nerve-racking for our parents who are listening or nerve-racking for the students who haven't really been on campus yet. So what advice do you have for families as they're preparing their students for the start of the school year and kind of how, you know, things are changing at the start of August?
Superintendent Guerin: That is a great question. So my advice, whether you're a parent or an employee, is to remember it's about personal connections. So as a parent, if I go to the back to school events, reach out by email, meet the teacher, get to know the school, make sure I make that positive connection that is going to help me feel confident in dropping off my student. If I'm a staff member, making a positive connection with families, sharing something great about their student, sharing an adorable moment that kids give us glimpses of all the time before there's a concern, before there's a challenge and there might not be one. But if you always start off building that relationship first and you're going to avoid challenges and B, if there is a challenge, you're going to have that connection already so you can navigate it together for in the best interests of students. So reach out to the school, get to know the school, get involved. Volunteers are back on campus. We have a volunteer process now. We definitely could use your help. So the more we all connect and get involved with each other and build relationships, the better the year will be. We are stronger together.
Nicole Rodriguez: I love that. So building relationships, incredibly important. And what about, you know, things like maybe building routines or setting some sort of schedule for students? You know, as we transition now, you know, they've been off for a couple of months. Maybe they're, I don't know, sleeping differently or, you know, staying up later or, you know, maybe not having breakfast at the same time. Do you have any advice for what parents can do to prepare for that first day in that aspect?
Superintendent Guerin: I do. And this is especially important because the past few years have been so disruptive. So students have been potentially learning at home for over a year. If a family chose that, they may not have had a typical preschool experience, first grade experience, fifth grade experience, transition from one school to the other. So routine is very comforting for students. So to have a routine in the morning, get enough sleep, limit the screen time before going to bed, making sure that the student has a quiet place, if they do have homework to do some homework. So just setting up that routine and talking to your student about what the day will look like is so helpful. And the teachers, of course, start the school year no matter what the grade, setting up expectations and routines. So if parents do that, and staff do that together, we will have a very successful new school year. So I think that is more important than ever because in the last few years, things have changed and sometimes students didn't know what to expect. So to give that comforting routine to them, for them to be able to focus on school and academics and not overschedule them, of course, we want well-rounded students, but you also always hear about the overscheduled child. So it's balance, it's routine and it's thoughtful care and communication.
Nicole Rodriguez: And I think that's great advice for us adults listening to balance and routine. I think we all need a little bit of that. It's comforting for me. So I think absolutely great advice. And lastly, what are you most I know we talked about, you know, our plans for the for the upcoming school year and your goals and what we're going to focus on in Madison as a district. But what are you most excited for for the 22-23 school year?
Superintendent Guerin: So I have a lot of firsts as a new superintendent. Last night was my first Madison school board meeting. First welcome back event first parent teacher association welcome back luncheon. So meeting the people, meeting the students, seeing the smiles on the faces of the students on the first day. So I am going to try, like I said, take a deep breath and enjoy every moment and every first because I am incredibly grateful to be in such a remarkable learning community.
Nicole Rodriguez: Well, thank you. And I know our community is very excited. Our parents are excited. Our students are excited to get back in school. They're excited to meet you and, you know, build that relationship with you. So we thank you so much for being here today.
Superintendent Guerin: Thank you so much.
Nicole Rodriguez: Thank you for listening to Parenting Future-Focused Kids. To listen to our latest episode, visit our Web site at Madisonaz.org/podcast or search "Madison School District" on Spotify.